The Fifth Gospel

Fifth Gospel (1950): Lecture II

Schmidt Number: S-2820

On-line since: 15th July, 2012

II

WE
will begin to-day by turning our thoughts to the event known as
Pentecost. I said in the first lecture that clairvoyant
research may first of all be directed to this event, for as we
look back into the past it presents itself as a kind of
awakening, experienced on the day commemorated in the
Whitsun Festival, by those who are generally known as the
Apostles or Disciples of Christ Jesus. It is not easy to form
clear and precise pictures of all these undoubtedly
strange phenomena. And if we want to think truly about the
matter we shall have to call up from deep down in our souls,
many things we have learned from previous studies of Theosophy.
It seemed to the Apostles that they were like men who had
awakened, feeling at the moment of waking that they had been
living for a long time in an unusual state of
consciousness. In very truth it was a kind of awakening from a
deep sleep, a wonderful, dream-filled sleep ... remember that I
am speaking of how it was experienced by the Apostles
themselves ... a sleep of such a kind that at the same
time a man carries out all the affairs of everyday life and
goes about just like a normal person, so that those with whom
he comes into contact do not notice at all that he is in a
different state of consciousness. The moment came when it
seemed to the Apostles as if they had been living for a long
time, for many, many days, in a kind of dream from which they
woke at this time of Pentecost; and the awakening itself was a
strange experience. The Apostles felt as if there had actually
descended upon them from the Cosmos, something which could only
be called the Substance of the all-prevailing Love. They felt
as if they had been quickened from on high by the
all-prevailing Love and awakened from the condition of dream
into which they had fallen. It seemed to them as if they had
been wakened to life by the primal force of Love pervading and
warming the Cosmos, as if this primal force of Love had come
down into the soul of each one of them. And to others who could
observe them and hear how they were speaking now, they seemed
altogether strange. The others knew that they were men who
until now had lived in extraordinary simplicity, a few of whom
had, it is true, behaved somewhat strangely during recent days,
as if lost in dream. This they knew. But now it seemed to the
people as if these men had been transformed, as if their very
souls had been made new; they seemed to have lost all
narrowness, all selfishness in life, to have acquired largeness
of heart, an all-embracing tolerance and a deep
understanding for everything that is human on the earth.
Moreover they were able to express themselves in such a way
that everyone present could understand them. It was felt that
they could look into every heart, could read the deepest,
innermost secrets of the soul and so were able to bring
consolation to every single individual, to say to him exactly
what he needed. It was naturally amazing that such
transformation could take place in a number of men. But these
men themselves in whom the transformation had come about,
who had been awakened by the Spirit of Cosmic Love, now felt
within them a new understanding of what had, it is true, come
to pass in intimate connection with their own souls, but which
they had not previously grasped. Now, at this moment, there
dawned in their souls an understanding of what had actually
transpired on Golgotha.

And
when we look into the innermost soul of one of these Apostles,
into the soul of him who is called Peter in the other Gospels,
it is revealed to clairvoyant sight as it gazes backwards
into the past, that his normal earthly consciousness completely
ceased to function from the moment referred to in the other
Gospels as the Denial. He beheld this scene of the Denial, how
he had been asked whether he knew the Galilean; and now he knew
that at that moment he had denied any such connection because
his normal consciousness was beginning to fade and an abnormal
condition to set in — a kind of dream condition
indicating a withdrawal into an altogether different
world. Peter's experience was like that of a man who when he
wakes in the morning remembers the last events of the previous
evening. Thus did Peter remember the scene usually known as the
Denial, the triple Denial before the cock had crowed twice. And
then, like outspreading night, the intermediate condition came
upon his consciousness. But this intermediate condition
was filled, not with mere dream-pictures but with
pictures representing a kind of higher consciousness, an
experience of things belonging to the world of pure
Spirit. And all that had happened, all that Peter had as it
were slept through since that time arose before his soul like a
vision. Above all he was now able to gaze at that event of
which it can truly be said that he had slept through it,
because for a full understanding of this event the quickening
by the all-prevailing Cosmic Love was necessary. Now there came
before the eyes of Peter the pictures of the Mystery of
Golgotha, as we, looking backwards with clairvoyant
consciousness, can again evoke them if the conditions necessary
for such vision are induced.

Frankly, it is with a feeling altogether unparalleled
that one makes the decision to put into words what is revealed
when one gazes into the consciousness of Peter and of the
others who had gathered together at that Whitsun
Festival. The decision to speak of these things can only be
fraught with holy awe. One is almost overpowered by the
consciousness of treading on the most sacred soil of
human vision when one puts into words what is here
revealed to the eyes of the soul. Nevertheless for
certain inner reasons it seems necessary to speak of these
things in our time, while realising that in ages other than our
own and yet to come, they will find more understanding than is
possible now. For in order to comprehend many a thing that will
have to be said on this occasion, the human soul will have to
break free from much that has been and will be instilled into
it, quite inevitably, by the culture of the times.

To
begin with, there arises before the gaze of clairvoyance
something that seems like an affront against the conceptions of
modern science. Nevertheless I feel compelled to put into
words what presents itself here to the eyes of soul — as
far as I am able to do so. I cannot help it if what has to be
said finds its way to inadequately prepared hearts and souls
and if the whole thing is mooted as untenable in face of the
scientific views by which the present age is entirely
dominated. The gaze of clairvoyance lights, to begin with, upon
a picture that represents an actual happening, one that is
hinted at in other Gospels too, but is a particularly striking
spectacle when one sees it emerging from the myriad pictures
arising before the backward-turned eye of vision. This
clairvoyant gaze actually beholds a kind of darkening of the
earth. And one feels, as it were in aftermath, that deeply
significant moment when, as in a solar eclipse, the physical
sun was darkened over the land of Palestine, over the place of
Golgotha. And one has the impression, which vision
schooled in the sense of Spiritual Science can still confirm
when an actual, physical eclipse of the sun casts shadow over
the land: that to the eyes of soul the whole environment of man
looks quite different during the time of an eclipse. I shall
refrain from dealing with the spectacle presented during a
solar eclipse and with all those things that are the
creations of human artifice and technique. To be able to
endure the spectacle of those demonic powers and entities which
during an eclipse of the sun rise out of the creations of
art-forsaken, technical science, requires great courage and the
realisation that all these things were inevitable. I do
not propose, however, to go further into this particular
matter but merely draw attention to the fact that a vision, at
other times only to be reached after very difficult meditation,
lights up and reveals that during a solar eclipse all
plant-life, all animal life, every butterfly, take on
quite a different appearance. It is an experience that in the
very deepest sense brings the conviction of how intimately a
certain form of cosmic-spiritual life belonging to the
sun and having its physical body in the visible sun, is
connected with life on the earth. And when the physical
radiance is darkened by the intervening moon, this is
different from when, during the night, the sun is merely not
shining. The spectacle of the earth around us is quite
different during an eclipse of the sun from what it is during
an ordinary night. During an eclipse of the sun one feels the
group-souls of the plants and of the animals lighting up ...
all the physical embodiments of the animals and plants seem to
pass into shadow, while the group-souls become radiant. All
this presents itself very vividly when the backward-turned gaze
of seership contemplates that moment in the earth's evolution
when the Mystery of Golgotha took place. And then comes an
experience which may be described by saying: one learns to read
what this remarkable phenomenon of nature perceived in the
Cosmos really signifies! I cannot help it if — in
defiance of all contemporary materialism — I am obliged
to read in the occult script at this particular point in the
earth's evolution, a purely natural event, one that has also
occurred, of course, both before and since, and to speak of the
direct impression it makes. It is like opening a book and
reading the script ... one feels when this event is there
before one that what one should read comes out of the
very script itself. This cosmic script compels one with a kind
of necessity to read something that mankind must come to know.
It appears before one like a word inscribed in the Cosmos, like
a sign in the Cosmos. And when one opens the soul to it, what
is it that one reads?

In
the lecture yesterday I spoke of how by the time of Greek
culture, mankind had evolved to the point where, in Plato and
Aristotle, a very high development of the human soul, a very
high level of intellectuality had been attained. In many
respects the intellectual knowledge attained by Plato or
Aristotle has never since been surpassed. Intellectuality
in mankind there reached a certain zenith. A vast store of
knowledge had been acquired. And if one pictures this
intellectual knowledge to which humanity had attained, which at
the time of the Mystery of Golgotha had been spread abroad by
wandering preachers far and wide over Greece and Italy, if one
pictures how this knowledge had spread in a way
incomprehensible to-day — then it is possible to
receive the impression which seems to be like a reading of that
occult script out in the Cosmos. And when clairvoyant
consciousness has been mustered, one realises: all this
knowledge, gathered and garnered by humanity in pre-Christian
times, has its symbol in the moon, as for earthly sight
it passes through the Cosmos. The moon is the symbol, because
for all higher stages of human cognition this knowledge has
acted, not as a light-bringer or solver of riddles, but rather
as a bringer of darkness, just as the moon darkens the sun
during a solar eclipse. That is what one reads. All the
knowledge existing at that time shed darkness, not
illumination, upon the riddle of the universe. And as a seer
one feels the higher, truly spiritual regions of the world
darkened by the intellectual achievements of antiquity
which placed themselves like a screen in front of the real
knowledge, just as the moon screens the sun during a solar
eclipse. And the external event becomes a symbolic expression
of the fact that human evolution had reached a stage where the
knowledge born of man's own mind placed itself in front of the
higher knowledge, like the moon before the sun during an
eclipse. In that eclipse of the sun one feels the darkening of
the sun of humanity in earthly evolution, engraved into the
Cosmos in a stupendous sign of the occult script. I have said
that the modern scientific mind may take this as an affront,
because it has no understanding of the sovereign power of the
Spirit in the universe. I do not want to speak of miracles in
the ordinary sense of the word, of any infraction of the laws
of nature, but I cannot do otherwise than convey to you how one
can read that darkening of the sun — read with the eyes
of soul what it is that this happening of nature expresses.
With the moon-knowledge, darkness crept over the higher
message of the sun.

And
then there actually comes before the clairvoyant
consciousness, the picture of the Cross raised on Golgotha, of
the body of Jesus hanging upon it between the two thieves; the
picture, too, of the body being taken down from the Cross and
laid in the grave ... And here I will add that the more one
tries to prevent it, the more forcibly does it present itself.
And now comes a second mighty sign, whereby again there is
written into the Cosmos something that one must read in order
to discern it as a symbol of what has actually transpired in
the evolution of humanity. One contemplates the picture
of Jesus taken down from the Cross and laid in the grave, and
then, while the gaze of the soul is thus directed, one has the
experience of being shaken through and through by an earthquake
which spread through that region.

One
day, perhaps, people will understand — in the scientific
sense too — more about the connection between that
darkening of the sun and the earthquake, for certain
theories which are already current in the world, but somewhat
haphazardly, indicate that there is a connection between solar
eclipses and earthquakes, and even fire-damp in mines. That
earthquake followed upon the eclipse of the sun. It shook the
grave in which the body of Jesus had been laid, and the stone
covering it was wrenched away; a fissure was rent in the earth
and the corpse was received into it. Another tremor caused the
fissure to close again over the corpse. And when the people
came in the morning the grave was empty, for the dead body of
Jesus had been received into the earth. The stone, however,
still lay where it had been hurled. — Once again let us
follow the sequence of pictures! Jesus dies on the Cross of
Golgotha. Darkness breaks in upon the earth. The corpse of
Jesus is laid into the grave. A tremor shakes the land and the
corpse is received into the earth. The fissure caused by the
tremor closes; the stone is hurled aside. These are all actual
happenings. I cannot describe them in any other way. Let those
who wish to approach these things from the basis of natural
science form what opinion they like, bring forward all kinds of
contrary arguments: what the gaze of clairvoyance perceives is
as I have described it. And if anyone were to say: it is
impossible that from the Cosmos there should be set up, as it
were in a mighty language of signs, a symbol of something
New having entered into the evolution of mankind; if
anyone were to say: the Divine Powers do not write into the
earth in such signs a happening like an eclipse of the sun and
an earthquake ... then I could only answer: You believe in all
sincerity that such things are impossible. Nevertheless
they actually happened. I can imagine someone like Ernest
Renan, the author of that strange work,
The Life of Jesus,
saying that such things are incredible, because one
only believes in what can at any time be re-confirmed by
experiment. But this thought is not tenable ... for would a man
like Renan not believe, let us say, in the Ice Age, although
that cannot be confirmed by experiment? It is quite impossible
to reconstruct the conditions prevailing in the Ice Age and yet
all scientists believe in it. Equally impossible is it that
this unique cosmic sign can ever appear again to men
— yet for all that, the sign was there.

We
can only be led to these events when, as seers, we find the way
to them as I have indicated, when we sink in deepest
contemplation into the soul of Peter or of one of the other
Apostles who at the time of Pentecost felt themselves quickened
by the all-prevailing Cosmic Love. Only when we
contemplate the souls of those men and discern the nature
of their experiences, is it possible in this indirect way to
gaze at the Cross raised on Golgotha, to behold the darkening
of the earth at that time and the subsequent earthquake.
It is not denied that in the external sense this darkening and
earthquake were ordinary happenings of nature, but one who
having induced the requisite conditions in his soul, follows
and reads these events with clairvoyant sight, will be emphatic
that they were as I have described them. For in the
consciousness of Peter, what I have now described was, in very
truth, an experience that crystallised out of the long sleep.
Among the manifold pictures crossing Peter's consciousness,
those of the Cross raised on Golgotha, the darkening and the
earthquake, for example, stood out in vivid relief. These
experiences were for Peter the first result of the quickening
by the Cosmic Love at Pentecost. And he now knew something he
had not really known before: that the event of Golgotha had
taken place and that the body on the Cross was the very same
body with which he had often gone about together in life. Now
he knew that Jesus had died on the Cross, that this dying was
in reality a birth: the birth of that Spirit outpoured
as the all-prevailing Cosmic Love into the souls of the
Disciples assembled at Pentecost. Peter felt it as a ray of the
primordial, aeonic Love ... born when Jesus died on the Cross.
And this stupendous truth sank down into Peter's soul: It is
only illusion that on the Cross a death took place. This death,
preceded as it had been by infinite suffering, was in
truth the birth of the ray now penetrating the soul. The
all-prevailing Cosmic Love which had previously been
present everywhere outside and around the earth, had, with the
death of Jesus, been born into the earth. In the abstract, such
words seem facile, but one must for a moment actually be
transported into the soul of Peter to realise what he
experienced then for the first time: When Jesus of Nazareth
died on the Cross, at that moment there was born for the earth
something that was previously to be found only in the
Cosmos. The death of Jesus of Nazareth was the birth of the
Cosmic Love within the sphere of the earth.

This is, so to speak, the first knowledge we are able to read
from the Fifth Gospel. What I have now been describing begins
with what is called in the New Testament the coming, or the
outpouring, of the Spirit. The nature and character of the
souls of the Apostles at that time did not make it possible for
them to participate in the real sense in this event of the
death of Jesus of Nazareth otherwise than in an abnormal state
of consciousness.

To
Peter, as also to John and James, there came, inevitably, the
remembrance of another moment in their lives, the moment that
can only be revealed to us in all its majesty by the Fifth
Gospel. He with whom they had gone about on earth had led them
out to the mount and had bidden them: Watch! And they had
fallen asleep. The condition which spread with greater and
greater intensity over their souls had already then set in.
Their normal consciousness faded, they sank into the
sleep which lasted beyond the time of Golgotha; and from this
sleep the experiences I have been trying in halting words to
describe, shone forth. Peter, John and James were inevitably
reminded of how they had fallen into this condition of sleep
and now, as they looked back, the vision lit up of the mighty
events which had transpired around the earthly body of Him with
whom they had gone about together. And gradually ... as
submerged dreams rise up into the consciousness of men ...
gradually the Apostles became conscious of what had transpired
during those past days. During those days they had not
experienced these happenings in their normal consciousness.
What now came into their ken had lain deep down in their souls,
submerged as it were for the whole of the period between the
event of Golgotha and Pentecost. This period seemed to them to
have been one of deepest sleep — above all through the
days between the event known as the Ascension, and Pentecost.
As they looked backwards, the whole period — day by
day — between the Mystery of Golgotha and the Ascension
of Christ Jesus into heaven, came before their souls. They had
lived through it all but only now did they become
conscious of it — and in a strange and mysterious
way. Forgive me if I here interpose a personal remark. I must
confess that I myself was amazed in the highest degree when I
became aware of the manner in which all that the Apostles
had lived through between the time of the Mystery of Golgotha
and the Ascension rose up into their consciousness. It is
indeed remarkable.

Pictures like these came before the souls of the Apostles: You
were together with the Being who has been born on the Cross,
you were with Him in very truth ... Just as on waking in the
morning the remembrance of a dream might tell one: during the
night you were with this or that person! ... But what is so
remarkable is how the particular events came up into the
Apostles' consciousness. Over and over again they were
compelled to ask themselves: Who, then, is that Being with Whom
we have been together? And time after time they did not know
who He was. They knew with certainty that they had gone
about with Him, but they did not recognise Him in the Form
which had then been before them and which now, after they had
been quickened by the all-prevailing Cosmic Love, appeared to
them in a picture. They saw themselves going about after the
Mystery of Golgotha with Him whom we call the Christ. And they
saw, too, how He had taught and instructed them from the realm
of the Spirit. They came to realise that for forty days they
had gone about with this Being who upon the Cross had been
born, that this Being — the All-prevailing Love itself
born out of the Cosmos into the world — had been their
Teacher, but that they had not been mature enough to understand
His words; they realised that they had been obliged to receive
His teachings with the subconscious forces of their souls, that
they had gone about with the Christ like sleep-walkers, unable
to understand with their ordinary minds what this Being
imparted to them. During these forty days they had listened to
Him with a kind of consciousness quite unfamiliar to them
and which now, at Pentecost, became alive in them for the first
time. They had listened to Him like sleep-walkers. This Being
had come to them as their spiritual Teacher and had instructed
them in mysteries which it was only possible for them to
understand because He transported them into quite a
different state of consciousness. Therefore not until now did
they realise that they had gone about with Christ, with the
Risen Christ. It was only now that they recognised what had
really happened to them. And how did they recognise that this
was the very same Being with whom they had gone about in the
body, before the Mystery of Golgotha? This can be described in
the following way: —

Let
us suppose that now, after the event of Pentecost, a
picture of this kind came before the soul of one of the
Apostles. He saw how he had gone about with the Risen One. But
he did not recognise this Being. Then another picture
interposed itself, a picture which, mingling with the purely
spiritual picture, represented an experience actually
undergone by the Apostles in the presence of Christ Jesus
before the Mystery of Golgotha. There was a scene where they
felt that they were being taught by Christ Jesus about the
Mystery of the Spirit. But they did not recognise Him, they
merely saw themselves in the presence of this spiritual
Being. And in order that they might recognise Him, this
picture, while still intact, merged into the picture of the
Last Supper — an experience they had shared with Christ
Jesus. Try to envisage in all reality that as the
super-sensible experience with the Risen One lit up in the
consciousness of an Apostle, there — working as it were
in the background — was the picture of the Last Supper.
Then the Apostles knew that He with whom they had gone about in
the body was the very same Being who was teaching them now
— in the quite different Form in which He appeared after
the Mystery of Golgotha. Remembrances from the state of
consciousness that had been like a sleep were interwoven with
the memory-pictures of events preceding the onset of this
sleep. The Apostles experienced this as if two pictures were
superimposed: one picture was of their experiences after
the Mystery of Golgotha and another of the time before their
consciousness had clouded. Then they realised that these two
Beings belonged together: the Risen One and He with whom, a
relatively short time before, they had gone about together in
the body. And now they said to themselves: Before we were
awakened by the all-prevailing Cosmic Love, we were as if
transported from our ordinary consciousness. And Christ, the
Risen One, was with us. All unknowing, we were taken up into
His Kingdom; He went about with us, revealed to us the
mysteries of His Kingdom of which we are now becoming conscious
as if we had once experienced them in dream. — That is
what causes amazement: the invariable coincidence of one
picture of an experience of the Apostles with Christ after the
Mystery of Golgotha with a picture of a happening which before
the Mystery of Golgotha they had actually lived through
in their normal consciousness while together in the
physical body with Christ Jesus.

A
beginning has thus been made to impart what can be read in the
so-called Fifth Gospel. And at the end of this first
communication to-day it may be allowable for me to add a few
additional and necessary words. In an occult sense I feel
it my duty to speak about these things now. What I want to say
is the following. I know well that we are living in a time when
many things are being prepared for the near future of mankind
on earth, and that within our Anthroposophical Society —
as it has now become — we must feel ourselves as those in
whom an inkling is dawning that something essential for
the future has to be made ready in the souls of men. I know
that times will come when it will be possible to speak of these
matters in a way quite other than present conditions allow. For
we are all of us children of the age. But a time will come in
the near future when it will be possible to speak with greater
precision, when a great deal that can at present only be of the
nature of indication may perhaps be discerned with far,
far greater exactitude in the spiritual chronicle of
World-Becoming. Improbable as it seems to the modern
mind, such a time will come. For this reason it is a certain
matter of duty to speak about these things to-day by way of
preparation. And although I have had to overcome a certain
reluctance in speaking as I have done, this was outweighed by
the duty to the preparation that must be made in our time. This
was what led me to speak on this subject to you here. When I
speak of having overcome reluctance, please take this exactly
as it is meant. I ask explicitly that what I have to say
on this occasion shall be taken merely as a kind of stimulus,
as something which in the future it will be possible to express
much more adequately and with greater precision. You will
better understand what I mean by “overcoming
reluctance” if you will allow me not to withhold a
personal remark. I know full well that in the spiritual
research to which I have devoted myself, many things can only
be extracted with the very greatest difficulty and effort from
the spiritual record of the world's happenings —
particularly things of this nature! And I myself should not be
in the least surprised if the word “indication”
which I have used in connection with them were to prove to have
still weightier and wider implications than need to be
attributed to it now. I do not say — most emphatically I
do not say — that I am already in a position to say with
all precision what presents itself in the spiritual script. For
particularly in my own case I am aware of all kinds of
difficulties and of the labour required when it is a question
of drawing from the Akasha Chronicle pictures relating to
Christianity. It costs me great effort to make these pictures
sufficiently concrete to be able to fix them and I regard it,
so to speak, as my karma that the duty is imposed upon me to
say what I have now brought myself to say. For without any
doubt it would cost me less effort if, as in the case of many
of our contemporaries, circumstances in my early youth had
enabled me to have a genuinely Christian education. I had no
such education. I grew up in an entirely free-thinking
environment. My own education was of a purely scientific
character. And that is why it costs me great effort to discover
these things of which it is my duty to speak. This personal
reference may be justified for two reasons. — One is that
with an utter lack of probity, an absurd story [It had been
alleged by Annie Besant that Dr. Steiner had been educated by
the Jesuits.] has been sent broadcast through the world about
my having been connected with certain Catholic influences.
There is not a single word of truth in this. And it is easy to
judge the pass to which things have come in what calls itself
Theosophy nowadays when such dishonest statements and rumours
emanate from its soil. As, however, we cannot ignore them but
must confront them with the truth, this personal reference is
justified. Just because of my remoteness from Christianity when
I was young, I feel all the freer from bias in regard to it; I
believe that the Spirit has led me to Christianity and to the
Christ. Especially in this domain I think I have a certain
right to claim freedom from bias and prejudice. Perhaps
— in this particular epoch of world-history — more
reliance can be placed upon the words of a man who has come
from a scientific education, who in his youth stood at a
distance from Christianity, than upon the words of someone who
has been connected with Christianity since early childhood. If
you ponder these words you will realise that they indicate
something of what lives within me when I speak of the mysteries
which I will designate as the mysteries of the Fifth Gospel.